Tonight's broadcast is the start of a new series dedicated to the history of radio-art in Austria which, again, is tightly connected to the history of ORF Kunstradio: Re-Inventing Radio: Radio as space, context, and content of art.

Besides highlights from the history of international radio-art such as the radio projects of the Italian Futurists, Walter Ruttman's "Weekend", Orson Welles"War of the Worlds", Antonin Artaud's"Pour en finir avec le judgement de dieu" or major contributions to radiophonic art by Austian artists (Gerhard Rühm a.o.), also exemplary projects of ORF Kunstradio from the 1980s and 90s are presented and commented on.

The broadcasts will be archived online as part of a historical compendium, also comprising additional links on the subject.

The Drama of Distances

The starting point of the first part of the series is Guillaume Apollinaire's story "The Mondkönig" (The Moon King) which describes the world with impressive sonic expressions. Already 1916, the author anticipates many methods, ideas and motifs taken for granted by radio artists nowadays: Overcoming distances, the inclusion of noise, a liberalized dealing with words, voices, and atmospheres; in other words, the inclusion of the complete spectrum of the audible world.

The Italian Futurists are of great importance for radio-art in a multiple sense. One of the first artists to include noise within music was the Futurist painter Luigi Russolo who backed-up this concept also theoretically with his manifestso "L'arte dei rumori" (The Art of Noise) from 1913:

"Every expression of our lives is accompanied by noise. Thus, our ears are used to noise which, again, can call back life to us. Therefore we are certain that by selecting, coordinating, and controlling all sounds, we will bring a new, unexpected pleasure to the people. Albeit a sound is marked by its ability to remind us of life brutally, the art of noise should not be limited to an imitating reproduction. It will achieve its greatest emotional power through acoustic pleasure per se which the artist will derive from the assembled sounds."

The film-maker Walter Ruttmann fulfilled these postulations in 1930 with his acoustic cinema "Weekend“ thanks to a new technology.

"Every audible thing on the whole world becomes material.
This endless material can now be formed to create new meanings due to the rules of time a n d space. For not only rhythm and dynamics will serve the creative power of this new audio art, but also space with the complete scale of sonic varieties dependent on the the spacial constitution. Thus, everything is open for a completely new acoustic art - new due to its means and its impact."
Walter Ruttmann (1929)

For "Weekend" Ruttmann used sounds produced in the studio as well as sounds recorded outside. He recorded his surroundings with a microphone in factories and on the streets of Berlin. This was the first time that a radio play was not broadcast live, but as pre-recorded piece. "Weekend" is the first radio play telling its story without actors, without specifically scripted text, using only environmental sounds and acoustic material and montage and cutting as self-contained composing principles.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's "Cinque Sintesi dal Teatro Radiofonico"
- the artist's theses on a radiophonic theatre from 1933 - are of
crucial importance for radio-art. Marinetti left scores for a number
of radio pieces which weren't reconstructed before the late 1970s,
amongst others the "Drama of Distances". Marinetti's theses demonstrate
a conception of radio which already indicates methods of telecommunication
- pointing out the, at that point not yet realizable potential of
the medium to broadcast simultaneously at/from multiple locations
- and the artist anticipates a global network of live connections.
Thus, Marinetti regards the radio as an instrument to overcome distances
and to unite these to a simultaneous radio sculpture. Finally, a piece
by the Italian media artist Sergio Messina brings us up to
recent history. "Marinectric", realized in 1991, consequently follows-up
the ideas of the Futurists. When bottles are bursting in the rhythm
of a sampled copy machine and the noise of an electric typewriter
overtakes the concert hall, then the digital sampler is the Intona
Rumori of a new generation of artists who edit sounds, tones, and
voices in real-time.